A Welcome Note for Our Mountain Friends

There’s something special about sharing these mountains with you—whether you’re reading one of our stories from your living room or walking the same small‑town streets, hiking the same ridge‑lines, and breathing in the same cool creek air that inspires every book we write.

Right now, we’re working on new tales, new mysteries, new mountain moments to keep you entertained and connected to this place we love. Some stories are already taking shape; others are just beginning to whisper. And we want you to be part of all of it.

Tell us what you want to see next—what kind of characters you’d like to meet, what corners of the Smokies you want us to explore, what mysteries you’d love to unravel. Because that’s exactly what we want too: stories that feel like home to you

The best memories are made in the mountains. Let’s make the next ones together.

Here is what we're working on...

Long before the first mystery ever found its way into our pages, the Smoky Mountain Dog Bakery was simply a dream Susan and I built with our own hands—a warm little place where dogs were family, neighbors were friends, and the mountains seemed to lean in close to listen. Over the years, that bakery became more than a shop. It became a gathering place, a story keeper, a home for every wagging tail that trotted through the door.

That same love—of dogs, of community, of these blue‑shouldered Smoky Mountains—now lives inside the Smoky Mountain Dog Bakery Mystery Series.

In Baked in Secrets, the first book, Julia Brandt steps into the bakery we once founded and discovers that even the warmest places can hide a few shadows. With her basset hound Walter leading the way, she uncovers small‑town secrets, unexpected friendships, and the kind of mystery only the mountains know how to keep.

If you’ve ever loved a dog, ever felt the pull of these hills, or ever wondered what stories might be tucked behind a bakery door at dawn, this series is for you. Come meet Walter, the shop dog. Come walk Main Street. Come see what the mountains have been saving just for you.

In the spring of 1998, the river running through Sylva, North Carolina rose without warning—quietly at first, then with a force that rewrote the town’s history. The Quiet Part of the River follows four women whose lives bend, break, and ultimately reshape themselves in the wake of that flood.

Maren, seventeen and already half gone from the life she was born into, senses the river’s change before anyone else. Her twin sister Lena hears danger long before she sees it, trained by the house she grew up in to listen for what others miss. Naomi discovers her life was washed away by a flood she knew nothing about. And Ava, decades later, finds everything she has known of her family and town was a lie..

Across two timelines, the novel traces how a single night of rising water alters the course of these women’s lives—and how each of them, in her own way, learns to face what the river kept quiet.

Told with the slow‑burn tension of Appalachian noir and the emotional depth of contemporary literary fiction, The Quiet Part of the River is a story about inheritance, resilience, and the way a place can hold both danger and salvation in the same breath. For readers who love character‑driven narratives, atmospheric Southern settings, and stories where the past refuses to stay buried, this novel offers a haunting, deeply human debut worth discovering.